Footage from Liberal Party meeting reveals who voted to sell the ABC

The divisive Liberal Party vote to privatise the ABC was backed by at least four of the party’s top federal officials, according to footage that also shows the idea gained support from at least one federal Liberal MP.

Liberal members applauded the result at the party’s federal council meeting on Saturday, with the video showing the majority was far greater than the 2:1 majority first estimated.

Fairfax Media has confirmed the final vote showed at least 39 council delegates voting in favour of the sale while 10 delegates voted against.

The convincing result drew applause from former cabinet minister Eric Abetz, whose Tasmanian delegation voted in favour of the sale with no members voting against.

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Four members of the party’s federal executive voted in favour of the call including Young Liberal president Josh Manuatu and vice president Mitchell Collier, who moved the motion.

The video shows two other members of the federal executive raising their hands to back the motion, which said: “That federal council calls for the full privatisation of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, except for services into regional areas that are not commercially viable.”

I thought it would be political suicide to vote for it because it would be used by Labor against us

Mr Manuatu said he was “duty bound” as federal president of the Young Liberals to vote in favour of the motion, since it was put by his organisation.

One of the four federal Liberal vice-presidents, Karina Okotel, confirmed to Fairfax Media that she voted in favour of the motion.

A member of the conservative wing in Victoria, Ms Okotel was elected to the federal executive last year and has been named as a potential candidate for the Senate at the next election. Ms Okotel also moved a motion, passed unanimously, to seek a review into funding for SBS.

“The motion is an aspirational statement by the membership that in the 21st century the days of needing the government to fund a national broadcaster in metropolitan areas are over,” Ms Okotel told Fairax Media on Monday.

“The private sector produces content faster, cheaper and more efficiently, and to ask them to compete against the government is completely unfair.

“The membership made a statement to the parliamentary party that, other than for rural and regional services which are in the national interest, in particular to have services in place to broadcast emergency warnings, they would like to see the ABC privatised.”

A screenshot from footage shows the strength of the vote to privatise the public broadcaster.

Another vice-president, Trish Worth, told Fairfax Media she voted against the motion.

“I thought it would be political suicide to vote for it because it would be used by Labor against us,” Ms Worth said.

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“Having lived for more than a third of my life in rural communities, I know how important the ABC is.

“I also enjoy many of the ABC’s programs.”

Ms Worth, a former federal MP and a member of the party’s moderate wing, attended the council meeting as a member of the federal executive but lost an election to maintain her position.

In a narrow vote, the conservatives secured a victory for their candidate for vice-president, NSW member Teena McQueen.

The footage of the media shows Ms McQueen voting in favour of the ABC sale.

The strength of support for the ABC is a key factor in the growing political dispute over the outcome, with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull vowing to keep the broadcaster in public hands.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten is warning that Liberal Party members will put pressure on the Prime Minister and his cabinet to act on the call from the federal council members.

Mr Collier told the meeting that “high sentimentality” was no reason to keep the public broadcaster in public hands and that taxpayers could save $1 billion a year by offloading it.

“Supporters of the ABC often say that if it were sold many of its investigative news programs would go away because the commercial networks for the most part don’t offer them,” Mr Collier told the meeting.

“If the public broadcaster were sold, these programs would not disappear, they would merely transfer to private stations.

“Now I understand that many Australians, including some in this room, despite the strong economic arguments, have a deep sentimental attachment to the ABC.

“And I must confess as a young boy growing up in the southern suburbs of Brisbane, some of my favourite programs were on the ABC – Bananas In Pyjamas, Rugrats, The Ferals. Not so much Playschool – I always thought that program was rubbish.

“But blind sentimentality is no justification for preserving the status quo.”

Mr Collier also told the meeting a media mogul was an obvious candidate to buy the ABC but that regional services could be protected by legislation.

“There are several ways we could privatise the ABC – we could obviously sell it to a media mogul, or organisation, the government could sell it on the stock market,” Mr Collier said before his motion was put to a vote.

Communications Minister Mitch Fifield at the meeting. Credit:AAP

No delegates stood from the floor of the council meeting to speak against the motion when invited by the party's president, Nick Greiner.

The only Liberal who spoke against the motion was Communications Minister Mitch Fifield, who did so from his position on the federal executive at the front of the room.

"It’s not the position of the government to alter the ownership arrangements of the public broadcasters," Senator Fifield said.

"But we do have a range of measures that we’re seeking to implement to enhance the efficiency, the accountability and the transparency of ABC operations which I’ll just quickly go through.

"In the budget, we announced an indexation pause for the ABC funding in its next triennium. We have paired that with an efficiency review to make sure that the ABC is being the best possible steward of taxpayer resources that it can be.

"I’ve also initiated something called a Competitive Neutrality Inquiry, which has the purpose of assessing whether the ABC and SBS are using their position as taxpayer-funded entities to compete in ways which are not fair with the commercial broadcasting sector.

"We also have a range of legislative measures which we have before the Senate. One of those, is to put into the ABC’s Act, specific and explicit reference to its obligations to rural and regional Australia. Most people think that the ABC Act states a specific obligation to rural and regional Australia. It doesn’t. We’re going to put that in the act."